Review: Joby Gorillapod Flexible Tripod

No matter how good of a photographer you are or how expensive your camera may be, you can benefit from a tripod. Stabilizing the camera when shooting is generally the most effective way to increase the quality of your photos, regardless of lighting conditions or your settings. If you get a steady shot with the proper exposure then you will have, at the very least, the digital information you need to get a good picture, even if a little Photoshopping is required.

The problem with tripods is that they are large, often expensive, and not particularly versatile. You can plant them on a stable surface and adjust the legs to work on a slope, but that is about it. The average tripod may not be very heavy, but it won’t fit in a typical bag and you need a lot of room to get it fully set up. Combine all of these factors and you find that people don’t use tripods unless they have to, and their pictures suffer as a result.

Joby’s Gorillapod is a possible solution to this. The device is a tripod that has bendable, articulated legs that will go into any shape you put them in and stay that way. The individual nodes that make up the legs are surrounded by grippy rubber rings that allow you to wrap the Gorillapod around things as well. The end result is a tripod that is very small, but will work almost anywhere, from standing on your desktop to wrapped around a tree branch.

There are three different Gorillapods, each of which is designed to support a different set of cameras depending on the weight of the camera and lens. The lightest model will work with your typical point-and-shoot, and the SLR model will work with your average DSLR or fixed lens zoom camera, finally there is the SLR Zoom, which is the most heavy-duty and it can hold a camera plus a serious lens.

Looking at the Gorillapod it is pretty obvious what it is–a flexible tripod with a removeable camera mount. The only feature on it is that mount, which can be locked into place using a ring right under it, or be removed by pressing a button. The legs are bendable but are stiff enough that they stay in place, providing that your camera is not too heavy. If you are not sure about this, Joby has posted a pretty useful guide which actually correctly identified that a Canon A620 (a pretty standard budget point-and-shoot) was too heavy for the normal Gorillapod and required the beefier SLR. The standard model sells for $21.95 while the SLR is $39.95 and the SLR Zoom is $49.95.

{ad}During use the Gorillapod performed nicely. It has a simple goal–to stablize your camera regardless of the surface and it does that well. Due to the design of the legs it can be hard to get the camera perfectly level so you have tinker with the legs, always making sure that they stay wide enough that the top-heavy structure does not fall over. It takes some time to get the setup just right, but most people will agree that it’s better to get a full range of motion and a longer setup than to limit the movement of the legs. When wrapped around something solid, like a lamp or sign post, the Gorillapod held tightly, though it was not always as reassuring as I would have liked.

Overall the performance of the Gorillapods was very good. I found that the SLR model worked a lot better as the standard Gorillapod was too light-duty for most cameras I tested, except for flyweights like the Samsung NV10. The removable mount was useful but not necessary, and you can buy a more from Joby if you would like. I did notice two issues with the Gorillapods which are worth noting. The first is that the lock on the smaller model broke so that the ring is stuck in the locked position and can’t be turned. This probably happened from me pushing it too hard in the wrong direction, but I was not overly aggressive with it. Also the tripod, because of all the nature of the joints, is a little bit springy so when you actually want to take the picture you have to be very cafeful with the shutter button, otherwise you will shake the camera and defeat the purpose of a tripod. The tradeoff for those adjustable legs is the loss of some stability, so as useful as the Gorillapod is, it is not a replacement for a standard tripod.

Speak Your Mind

iturk

Seems like it would require to much messing around to get it stable. I’d prefer a real tripod. In situations where I didn’t bring a tripod, I don’t think I would have grabbed this either. One suggestion you can DIY and carry in your pocket is just a string attached to a washer with a screw on the other end to go in the cameras tripod mount. Drop the washer to the ground and step on it, pull on camera until string is tighr and it adds quite a bit of stability and most important, it fit’s easily in your pocket or camera bag.

I think the build quality on the SLR verion is sufficient and I would not worry about that breaking, but I see your point. A good tripod is like $90 (at least that’s what my Slik was) so why drop half of that on something that is less useful? Camera guys love gear though, and it’s always nice to have the right tool for the job.

faxonpr

I bought mine at Radio Shack at half price, on a whim. I was looking for something to stabilize my pocketable digital camera and didn't want to carry around a heavy tripod or monopod. Yesterday in the museum (no flash) this product amazed me! I was able to bend it around to prop it on my body comfortably, giving much-improved stabilization comfortably. I have four tripods and a monopod, but this little gadget is going everywhere from now on. I am very pleased!

bruce dorcas

i have one and it works great. not cheap at all like some may lead you to believe.